Ivory Coast

U.S. students among first evacuees

American schoolchildren flew to safety Thursday on the first evacuation plane out of rebellion-torn Ivory Coast, while French troops launched a full-scale evacuation of frightened Westerners from a rebel-held city under threat of imminent government attack.

A U.S. C-130 carried the first 18 evacuees students age 8 to 18 from a mission boarding school and staff, most American to an airport in neighboring Ghana, where U.S. Embassy workers whisked them away to rest and start arranging reunions with families.

The first flight out came as U.S., French and British forces scrambled to bring all their nationals out of Bouake, a central city of 500,000 people that has been held by rebels since a failed Sept. 19 coup attempt.

Oklahoma

Fraternity apologizes for racist party attire

An Oklahoma State University fraternity apologized Thursday after a photograph appeared on the Internet showing one of its members in a Ku Klux Klan hood, another in blackface and a third with a Confederate flag bandanna.

Photographs from last weekend’s Alpha Gamma Rho off-campus party were on a Web site for a photographer selling snapshots from the “Come as You are Bizarre” party.

The most inflammatory picture shows one of the students in a prisoner’s costume, his face painted black. He is standing between two fraternity brothers one dressed in a white Klan costume and the other in overalls with a Confederate flag bandanna tied on his head. A mock noose dangles above the student with the painted face.

Alpha Gamma Rho’s chapter adviser suspended the three students from the Stillwater fraternity.

Washington

House limits patients’ malpractice awards

The House, responding to doctors’ complaints that rising insurance premiums are forcing them to quit their practices or relocate, passed a bill Thursday to cap pain-and-suffering damages that juries can award in malpractice suits.

The 217-203 vote came after a lengthy debate over whether limiting large jury verdicts would ease the costly insurance crunch felt by doctors and patients. Its passage faced an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled Senate, which already has rejected a similar measure.

The House legislation would limit noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, to $250,000. Punitive damages would be limited to twice the amount of economic damages awarded or $250,000, whichever is greater.

Patients’ ability to file lawsuits over old cases would be limited under the legislation, which would also curtail lawyers’ fees.

London

Study: Endometriosis linked to other diseases

Women with endometriosis a leading cause of infertility in which tissue from the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body are much more likely to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and allergies, new research has found.

The study, published this week in the journal Human Reproduction, is the first to document something that has been noticed by many women with the painful disorder.

The researchers urged doctors to look for the other diseases in women when diagnosing endometriosis, which afflicts between 8 percent and 10 percent of women of childbearing age.

The cause of endometriosis, as well as of the other diseases, remains unknown.